124 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
of so much interest that I may hope to be excused for quoting it : 
—‘‘There is a great outcry at present about the failure of the 
Dundee ships this season. They have themselves entirely to 
blame. They steam about so much on the whaling banks that 
they have scared all the Whales through to Behring’s Straits, 
and only left a few suckers on our side, who are not old enough 
to take care of themselves. We are also suffering from the 
stupid way in which the Whales were killed say fifty years since, 
and Davis Straits has been undergoing a process of extermina- 
tion for the past two hundred years. There will soon be a close 
time for Whales. Dundee is going to work out of it. They are 
not going to renew any of their ships: they are losing some of 
them every year. Here (Peterhead) we have only three first-class 
ships in the trade instead of twenty-eight, which we had twenty-five 
years ago. Besides all this, the oil is not wanted, even at the 
present low prices. We have great doubt here whether we will 
send our ships out again in the spring, having over a thousand 
tons of oil lying unsold, and cannot get a market for it.” 
Very few Whales were to be seen on my passage north 
in August. When crossing Vest Fjord (where one generally | 
expects during the summer to see some cetacean life) to the 
Lofodens and back, on the 14th, the sea was too high to allow of 
our seeing any Whales that might have been there, although 
others besides myself kept a careful look-out. The following 
day, to the north of Maalsnes, we saw a small Whale; and 
others, on the 17th and 18th, off the Kast Finmarken coast. 
One of these, which I did not see, may have been, from the 
description, a Humpback, but all that I saw appeared not to 
exceed 20 ft. in length; the back-fin appeared small and low. I 
did not see any of them spout, and they moved somewhat 
sluggishly. I do not think they were any of the Balenopteride, 
but possibly Pilot or Caa’ing Whales (Globiocephalus melas). On 
the 18th (off Tana Fjord), we passed three whalers cruising ; one, 
which was about six miles off shore (five from us), fired, and, as 
she immediately altered her course to nearly the opposite 
direction, and kept on turning, she was probably “‘ fast.” 
Humppack (Vardé, Aug. 20th).—A male, about 35 ft. long, 
was entirely black on the under side, except a not clearly-defined 
patch of white near each point of the under side of the flukes : 
some very small spots of white on the chin and belly were all, I 
